Aliens Stole My Body

  As if the very mention of his name had summoned him, Grumbo came waddling over, too. “You did a good job catching this one, Krixna,” he said approvingly, patting her silvery hair with a flabby white hand. “I’ll see your dad gets you a little present when we sell him.”

  Krixna made a face, but didn’t answer him.

  Grumbo squatted down to study us. This made him look pretty much like a dough ball with a streak of bright green mold on top. As he stared at us, a purple line began oozing out of his nose. I thought it was alien snot, until the front end of it lifted up and began waving around as if it was looking for something.

  Grumbo put up his finger, and the line began to wrap around it. It was slightly thicker than a toothpick, and about ten inches long.

  “Mommy!” cried Krixna. “Grumbo’s letting his worm out again.”

  “Don’t fuss, dear,” called Nanda from inside the ship. “It’s Grumbo’s pet, and he can do what he wants with it.”

  These people are seriously weird, thought Seymour in alarm.

  I had to agree.

  “Don’t you like my noseworm?” asked Grumbo, when he saw us blinking at him. “Krixna doesn’t, either. Common prejudice. He’s really a very sweet little worm. See?”

  With that, he thrust his hand toward us. Most of the worm was coiled around his finger. But the first three inches or so were sticking straight up. They began weaving back and forth like a snake charmer’s snake.

  I couldn’t be sure, but I thought it was humming.

  “He takes up hardly any room,” said Grumbo. “And he stimulates my brain in the most wonderful way. I could make a fortune selling these things, if I could only get people to try them. Ah, prejudice, prejudice.” He looked at us again, then muttered, “Of course, a worm like this wouldn’t do you any good, since you don’t have a nose for it to live in. You are the weirdest darn critter I ever did see.”

  Grumbo put his finger back to his nose. The worm crawled halfway in, leaving its lower half dangling over his lip. With a grunt, Grumbo got to his feet and stumped away.

  * * *

  By late that night our separation from Edgar was getting to be a serious problem. What we felt from the lack of energy being beamed into us wasn’t exactly hunger—we didn’t have a stomach, after all. It was more a dull ache all over our body, and a growing sense of weakness.

  I don’t know how much longer we can hold out, Uncle Rod, Seymour told me the next morning. I’ve never had to do this before.

  Fearful, wondering how much time we had left, I tried to contact Snout again.

  No success.

  * * *

  The day wore on. It was hard to tell whether our captors were on Kryndamar for vacation or business. Maybe it was a little bit of both. Whatever the reason, I desperately hoped they were going to stay long enough for our friends to find us.

  I can’t figure out why they haven’t located us already, complained Seymour.

  I had been wondering the same thing. But I also knew how hard it can be to find someone who is lost in a forest. One of the neighbor kids had gotten lost in the woods behind our house a few years before I met the aliens, and it had taken dozens of people to find him.

  Seymour and I would have only three people looking for us, not dozens. And they would need to cover an area far bigger than the one behind my house. That wasn’t even counting the fact that they probably wouldn’t split up, for fear of getting lost themselves; certainly Madame Pong wouldn’t let Elspeth go off looking for us on her own (though it was equally certain that Elspeth would insist she should be allowed to do so).

  So I knew they could easily search for days and not find us.

  Besides, it was better to believe that they couldn’t find us, than to think that something had happened to them, too.

  * * *

  Late that day, while the others were away from camp, Seymour and I heard something that only made things worse: in the distance Elspeth was calling, “Roddie! Seymour! Where are you? Ro-o-o-oddie-e-e-e-e! Seeeeeee-mour!”

  A moment later we heard Madame Pong calling, too.

  We perked up immediately, as if we had gotten a sudden burst of energy from Edgar.

  But the terrible thing was, we had no way to answer them! If we had been free, we would have gone running toward them. But staked down, unable to speak, we could only strain at the cord that tied us, and listen with sinking heart as they went off in the wrong direction, their voices growing dim and distant.

  We slumped back to the ground, our despair deeper than ever.

  * * *

  By late that night I feared I was going to have to give up on John Carter’s motto. After all, “I still live!” only works while you’re still alive—and that condition didn’t look like it was going to last much longer for the two of us.

  We were lying on our side, with barely enough energy to lift our eyeball from the ground. The others had gone to bed, Krixna crying because she wanted us to sleep with her.

  “Mr. Eyeball Guy is mine!” she wailed. “Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine!”

  Always nice to be wanted, thought Seymour. His words, weak and thin, seemed to come from a long way away.

  I love to be loved, I replied.

  Then neither of us thought anything for a while, because it seemed like too much work.

  An hour or so later I felt a tiny wisp of a thought come drifting over from Seymour.

  Sorry you had to be here for this, Uncle Rod.

  Then I knew he was dying.

  Which meant that I was, too.

  Bitterly, I thought of John Carter again. Then I realized I had missed the point. Using “I still live!” as a motto doesn’t make sense if you give it up when things start to look really bad. It only makes sense if you keep fighting until the last second, until life itself is gone. If you give up before that, it was never really your motto at all.

  I decided to try one final time to contact Snout. But as soon as I started, I realized I was in no condition to do so. Not because I was weak and about to die. I couldn’t do it because I was choking on fear.

  Stay calm, I told myself, repeating the opening chapter of Secrets of the Mental Masters over and over again. Stay calm. Stay calm. Stay calm.

  Remembering something Snout had taught me, I envisioned a private place I had created for myself, a kind of mental hideout based on a secret spot on my grandfather’s farm that I used to like to go to. I imagined myself there now, imagined myself safe and happy.

  To my own surprise, it worked. The horrible fear began to ebb. As it did, I focused my mind on what I had to do now. With all the energy and hope I could summon, I sent out one final message. Snout. Snout! Can you hear me?

  Anyone?

  Please?

  Energy gone, hope exhausted, I collapsed into a kind of blackness.

  CHAPTER

  12

  Swapping Stories

  “GET THAT EYE OPEN. HURRY. Hurry!”

  The voice seemed to come from somewhere in the distance. At first I thought it was someone yelling at Seymour and me, telling us to wake up. Then I felt someone actually pulling on our eyelid. It hurt. I wanted to flinch away, but didn’t have the strength.

  “Hurry!” cried the voice again.

  A sudden flood of light hit us, as whoever was working at our eyelid succeeded in pulling it open.

  Yeow! thought Seymour. That hurts!

  I agreed, in a groggy sort of way. The two of us would have closed our eye again, if we had had the strength. Then our vision started to focus, and we saw something that gave us a burst of energy.

  Kneeling in front of us, his lizardlike face only inches from ours, was Snout!

  Close behind him, looking anxious, were Madame Pong and Elspeth.

  Just beyond them stood our four captors—Mir-van, Nanda, Krixna, and Grumbo. Krixna, wiping her teary eyes and snuffling her bananalike nose, was whispering, “Please don’t die, Mr. Eyeball Guy. Please!”

  Snout reached behind him. Grumbo waddled
up and handed him Edgar, who was swollen to twice his normal size. The poor little guy looked like a furry purple basketball, or maybe a blowfish, since his fur stuck straight out like spines. For a minute I was afraid he was going to explode. Then he went “EEEEEE-E-E-E-E-P!”

  Seymour and I twitched as a jolt of energy come rushing into us, so sudden and fast it was as if someone had hooked us up to a giant battery.

  “Eeeeep,” said Edgar again, only this time it was more of a sigh. He sounded relieved, and I could see he was starting to shrink just a little.

  Snout set him on the ground in front of us. For a little while Seymour and I just lay there, letting Edgar beam energy into our eye.

  When we were finally able to stand, we trotted over to Snout.

  I was afraid I wasn’t going to be able to contact you, I thought.

  You didn’t.

  Then how did you get here? asked Seymour.

  Grumbo waddled over and squatted in front of us. “My worm picked up your distress call,” he said.

  Your worm? I thought in astonishment.

  Snout spoke the words aloud for me.

  “I told you, the worm stimulates my brain in a most wonderful way. In this case, it acted like an antenna, picking up your distress signal. When I heard you calling your friends, I realized we had made a terrible error.”

  What kind of error?

  Again, Snout translated.

  Grumbo looked at me as if he couldn’t believe I was asking the question. “We hadn’t realized you were a sentient creature,” he said, sounding just a little angry. “Obviously, we would never have collared you if we had known that. We are terribly sorry.”

  I realized that I had misjudged him. I had been so upset and angry when they captured us, and so disgusted by Grumbo’s brainworm, that I had assumed he was a total villain. But that wasn’t true. He was clearly distressed that they had mistaken Seymour and me for an animal.

  How come he can’t understand us now? I asked Snout.

  Snout, not having an answer, put the question to Grumbo.

  “I suspect it was the intensity of your need that let my worm pick up your call,” he said. “You were broadcasting, so to speak, at a high level. Now that I’m aware of it, I can tell you’re thinking. But I can’t pick up specific thoughts. It’s more like background noise. Static.”

  Too bad. I had hoped maybe I had finally cracked the communication problem. But if the only way I could get through to someone was by being at the edge of death, I clearly had a way to go yet.

  Krixna came over and put her arms around our neck. “I’m going to miss you, Mr. Eyeball Guy,” she sniffed. “But I’m glad you’re okay.”

  “No hard feelings, eh?” said Grumbo, patting us on the top of our eyeball. “It was an honest mistake, after all.” He turned to Snout and Madame Pong. “Strangest being I ever saw. What planet did you say he was from?”

  “We didn’t,” replied Madame Pong smoothly. “He is a political exile, and would prefer that no one knew he was here.”

  “Ah, I understand,” said Grumbo. “I feel the same way, if you know what I mean. The fewer people who know we were here, the better.”

  Madame Pong smiled. “I see we are in agreement,” she said, making a slight bow.

  Grumbo bowed, too. As he did, the worm crawled halfway out of his nose to wave its agreement.

  “Man, that’s disgusting,” said Elspeth, a hint of admiration in her voice.

  “Would you care to share a meal with us?” asked Nanda, stepping forward. “We feel dreadful about the misunderstanding. Of course, we can’t feed your friend here, since he doesn’t have a mouth. I don’t know what to do to make things up to him.”

  Just let us go home, thought Seymour.

  Madame Pong made another slight bow and said, “Thank you for the invitation. We would be delighted to share food with you.”

  Which was how we ended up sitting down to supper with the people who had been going to sell Seymour and me for a pet and had nearly killed us in the process. It made me think of that line in the Twenty-third Psalm, the one that goes, “He setteth a place for me in the presence of my enemy.” (I had had to learn the whole thing for Sunday school the year before I met the aliens.)

  It didn’t take Nanda and Mir-van long to come up with dinner, since their ship did all the cooking. Their biggest job was finding out what everyone liked. The two really fussy eaters were Elspeth and Krixna, which seemed to make them feel like they should be best friends.

  After dinner Madame Pong told a little story about something funny that had happened to her when she was a kid. Actually, for me the funniest part was trying to imagine her as a kid at all, since that had never occurred to me before.

  Grumbo responded with a story of his own. I didn’t realize what Madame Pong was up to until I remembered something she had said to me during our voyage to the Mentat: “If you want to know someone, get them to tell you their stories.”

  That was what she was doing now. Her own story had been a starter, just something to get things rolling. And she had chosen something from when she was little so as not to have to talk about the Galactic Patrol. But Grumbo, no fool, wasn’t going to give up too much information, either. So the stories that got swapped back and forth over our campfire tended to be amusing, but not much else.

  Until Krixna said, “I have a story to tell.”

  Her mother smiled. “Let the grown-ups talk, dear.”

  Which made me wonder if kids are treated the same everywhere in the galaxy.

  “Oh, let the child talk,” said Madame Pong gently. “I love to hear children.”

  Nanda glanced at Grumbo. He nodded. I guess they both figured that since everyone had been telling stories from their childhood, and since Krixna was still a kid herself, it would be safe to let her talk.

  Krixna smiled triumphantly, her yellow eyes glowing with triumph. “Once, when I was a little girl, we met some giants!”

  “Yeah?” said Elspeth, interested, but skeptical. “How big were they?”

  “About twice as tall as Daddy!”

  Suddenly I was on the alert. It sounded like Krixna’s “giants” were about the size of a typical Earthling. (We’re considered giants when compared to most of the humanoid species in the galaxy.) I glanced up at the sky. Was it possible Krixna and her family had made a stopover on Earth for some reason? Or—and this was the more interesting thought—had they actually run into some of the lost Atlanteans?

  I wished desperately that Dad was with us so he could hear this.

  “That’s very interesting, Krixna,” said Madame Pong with a smile. “And where did you meet these giants?”

  “Oh, it was some planet where we had stopped to collect a few specimens for one of our clients,” said Grumbo, jumping in a little too quickly to sound as casual as he was pretending to be. “But I’m afraid Krixna is exaggerating just a bit. They were big, but not that big. You know how children are.”

  “I am not zajjeratin’!” said Krixna indignantly. “I always tell the truth, just like Mommy taught me.”

  I know what you mean, kid, I thought, remembering when I was totally incapable of telling even a tiny lie because my mother had trained me so well.

  “Where did you meet these fabulous creatures, sweetheart?” asked Madame Pong again. She was smiling, as if she didn’t really believe all this. But I noticed that she directed the question specifically to Krixna, bypassing the adults.

  Before the little alien girl could answer, Elspeth jumped up. “Eeuuuw!” she shouted, brushing frantically at her arm. “Eeuuuw! Eeuuuw! Eeuuuw!”

  Madame Pong sighed. “What is it now, Elspeth?”

  “I don’t know. I just felt something slimy crawl over my hand. Then I . . .”

  Her words tapered off.

  Her eyes grew wide.

  She raised her arm to point. In the same voice you might use to shout, “Fire!” she cried: “WORMS!”

  CHAPTER

  13

&nbs
p; The Worms’ Turn

  NOW THAT ELSPETH HAD POINTED the worms out, you couldn’t miss them. There were worms all around us, and more squiggling our way from every direction. Hundreds of worms. Thousands of worms. Millions and billions and trillions of worms. The land around us had become a squirming, writhing mass of wormflesh. Utterly silent, they covered the ground like some living blanket. Even as Seymour and I stood staring in horror, we could feel some of them starting to crawl up our legs.

  “Mommy!” wailed Krixna. “I’m frightened!”

  I probably would have said pretty much the same thing, if I had had a mouth. Elspeth didn’t bother with words; she just stood there screaming. Nanda plucked Krixna off the ground to keep her away from the squirming worm horde. Then Mir-van swept Nanda into his arms, to do the same thing. As I saw him standing there, holding his wife who was holding their little girl, it made me wish my dad was there. Not to hold me. (Well, maybe I wished for that a little.) Just so we could fight side by side.

  Except how do you fight worms? We could step on them. We could tear them away from our bodies. But not all of them. Not even a tiny fraction of them.

  I could feel Snout sending a message: Stay calm, he urged. Stay calm.

  But how do you stay calm when you see a writhing flood of worms about to engulf you? They crawled over and around each other, like living spaghetti oozing its way across a plate. Only, unlike spaghetti, the worms were all sizes and colors—from tiny red ones shorter than my little finger to four-foot-long monsters that were brownish purple in color and as thick as a man’s arm. And instead of tomato sauce they were covered with gooey slime.

  I wanted to run, but it was pointless—the worms were coming from all directions. To run would have been to plunge right into them.

  Seymour and I felt more worms oozing onto our legs. We shook our right front leg, sending some of them flying. But as soon as we set it down so that we could shake another leg, it was covered again.